Album Review: Beach House ‘Bloom’My Nguyen May 8, 2012
Seldom are you able to find such a great plethora of sounds and colors embedded into an entire full-length release. NPR’s First Listen is currently streaming Beach House’s Bloom, officially scheduled to be dropped May 15 and the album proves to be the much-anticipated release that the media is making it out to be. The elaborate and drifting reverb drenched within the melodious vocals interwoven into the tracks creates a rich blend of ethereal sounds. Highly engrossing, these tracks vie for your attention. Each are entrenched in uncondescending sweet sounds and the alluring vocals of Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand. There’s definitely a transformative aspect to Bloom that listeners will recognize from the get-go. The interwoven vocals produce this effect, where the singers begin to sound nearly synonymous after a while, creating this majestic cacophony of richness that is nearly contagious. A certain ebb and flow motion to the music could also be detected that you may find yourself getting lost within the slow beguiling sounds. Dreamy and highly atmospheric, there’s this moody quality that unravels as you maneuver your way deeper into the album. There’s a damaged loss to this compilation, a broken aspect that is carefully rendered in the slow tilting, and airy vocals. The spiraling effects come to a climax toward the end of the compilation in the track, titled, “Irene,” where two guitar chords are played repetitively towards the latter half of the song. Similar to the indie-rock band, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ hit single, Maps, the Beach House’s six minute track follows the same whiney electric guitar formula. But listeners may find themselves becoming lured again and again to the strained and taunt reverberating sounds from where the closing song left off, so that they will discover that they are revisiting favorites off the album and maybe even begin to realize that being submerged beneath the clashing sounds much like psychedelic waves themselves, is not a want, but a privilege.
Bloom is the band’s fourth studio album.
Photo courtesy of crazybobbles via Flickr.
